Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [114]
They were as excited as I was that we didn’t have to pay or work for our lodging, and together we spent the remainder of the afternoon relaxing, reading, and being still. It was the perfect afternoon, and the perfect birthday for Nightwalker—until dinner.
When it was time to eat, we sat at long rectangular tables with the other hut inhabitants and passed food around family style. Usually I like family style because it reminds me of camp, and I love camp. But I didn’t like the family-style format that evening because the other guests at our table took more than their fair portion of food. By the time the serving platters reached our end of the table, the portions were fit for a five-year-old, and the kitchen didn’t provide any second helpings.
I was livid. These hikers, as they liked to call themselves, were out here for a night or a weekend and had plenty of food in their rooms, their backpacks, and in the cars waiting for them at the bottom of the mountain. And from the looks of them, they really didn’t need the extra calories!
My stomach was screaming with hunger pains, which I unsuccessfully tried to quiet with the three bites of pasta that had been left on the platter by the time it reached me. But when dessert came, I felt vindicated. It was a homemade birthday cake that the kitchen staff had made for Nightwalker, and they let him serve it. Since I had some influence over Nightwalker, let’s just say that everyone there got his or her just desserts.
The next morning we summited Mount Washington. It was cold and windy, and I was wearing every article of clothing that I carried.
At the top of the mountain, there is a large cement building. I wish they had not put the building there. Sure, the inside of the structure with its weather station, museum, and snack bar was pretty cool, but aside from the weather station everything would have been just as effective at the base of the mountain. I guess they needed the building, though, because otherwise tourists wouldn’t pay twenty dollars to drive up to the top of the mountain or sixty dollars to ride up on the Cog Train.
I didn’t know what a Cog Train was until we left the top of the mountain and started down the backside. I just thought it was a normal train that took people from the bottom of the mountain to the top. What I learned on the descent was that a Cog Train runs on coal and is twice as loud, stinky, and dirty as a regular train. But I’m sure that the tourists who travel the Cog to the top of Mount Washington must like it. Why else would they subject themselves to breathing in black air, listening to a loud whistle, and traveling up a mountain that is usually cloudy to reach an expensive snack bar on the summit?
The train route parallels the AT before crossing the path near the summit. Although we were still several hundred yards away from the tracks, we could see the train slowly lurching up the mountain, and we could hear it too. The noise was piercing even from a quarter mile away, and the smoke was disgusting. I have never seen so much pollution coming from one machine in my life. As we hiked closer, we started to smell the coal that powered the machine, and it burned my nostrils.
The whistling, smoking, smelly monster contrasted with everything that was lovely about this place. Before hiking the trail, I’m sure that a ride to the top of the mountain on the Cog Train wouldn’t have fazed me. But several months of living in the woods made loud noise and pollution on top of a remote mountain seem even more abnormal.
The boys insisted that it is a thru-hiker tradition to moon the Cog. I’m not generally a proponent of mooning or public nudity, but when Nightwalker and Mooch decided to turn around and show their cheeks to the locomotive, I couldn’t blame them and I didn’t try to stop them.
Nearly an hour later, when the smell and haze from the train had lifted, I saw two young men hiking quickly up the mountain. They didn’t